Contextual Interview refers to when a researcher, without formal administration of tasks, passively penetrates the interviewee’s world and acquires the relevant information. The Interview takes place in the interviewee’s natural setting, and the survey methods include active listening and observations. Majorly, contextual Interview generates qualitative data rather than quantitative data. For an extended period, I have been curious about how dark web sites operate and how people can conduct trade via the dark web. To be able to get accurate information, doing of contextual Interview was necessary.
Thus, when an opportunity came to conduct contextual Interviews on a computer programmer, I did not hesitate.
The dark web is a space where one can do their online activities while maintaining anonymity. There is a range of activities that go on in the dark web, such as the purchase of different kinds of commodities. The significant difference between the dark networks and these other browsers is that their location cannot be established. Hence, my contextual interviewee had three primary goals; Logging in to dark web, order a product as well as make payment while at the same time maintaining the anonymity.
I noticed that logging in to a dark web was easier than I thought as it only required the installation of Tor, a dark web browser. After that, on searching, access to a wide range of unfiltered information was accessible. The computer programmer did not require a lot of equipment but only had a laptop and a robust wireless connection. I observed that when making attempts to log in in the dark web, the interviewee was continually locked out, which he attributed to tracing efforts by the authorities. However, on successful login into the website, the whole process of ordering and purchasing a product took less than 10 minutes. On the significant challenge encountered, on being locked out of a particular website, the interviewee had no other options other than to try logging in to another site.